


She Came From the Stars

by Orthane



Series: Otherworldly [1]
Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman - All Media Types, Superman (Comics), Superman - All Media Types, Superman/Batman (Comics)
Genre: Accurately Writing Kryptonian Powers Because They are Freaking OP, Action, Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Christian Clark Kent, Christianity, F/M, Fictional Religion & Theology, Islam, Kryptionian(s), Not Canon Compliant, OFC-centric, Practicing Muslim(s), Religion, Romance, So Why Is It Even Possible To Defeat Them?, Warning: I Am Making Crap Up As I Go, Xenophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:21:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24228769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orthane/pseuds/Orthane
Summary: Aisha wasn’t human, that much she was aware of, but as far as she was concerned, she would continue the rest of her life living as one. Unfortunately, a powerful being like her can’t be left unnoticed for long—especially when another entity with the same powers begins to gain a lot of unwanted attention. But it’s when that attention eventually starts to come from sinister characters all over the universe that her life spirals into madness.
Relationships: Clark Kent/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Otherworldly [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1748809
Comments: 4
Kudos: 42





	1. The Red and Blue Blur

**Author's Note:**

> “English.” + “ _Emphasized Dialogue._ ”
> 
> “ **Arabic.** ”
> 
> _Thoughts._

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s the start of something beautiful.

Aisha carefully turned the doorknob, touching it so carefully it felt like she wasn’t touching it at all. The finger shaped dents from previous times said otherwise. Many a time did she and her parents have to have it replaced because of her inability to gauge her own strength, but nowadays the money to pay for the bills came from her own pocket after making the same mistake over countless of times.

Again, doing her best to restrain her actions, she tapped the door open with her shoulder.

“ **Bismillah, asalamu’alaykum** ,” she greeted loudly as she entered the house and pushed the door shut.

“ **Wa’alaikumusalam** ,” her father answered from his office. Aisha listened as he shut his laptop, pushed his chair back, and he made his way to the entrance, footsteps echoing loudly in her ears.

She kissed her fathers hand and cheeks, as was customary in their household, and walked to the kitchen. Setting down the groceries, she let out a small breath and began undoing her hijab. “How was your day, pa?” She asked as she removed the pins from her scarf and slipped them in her pockets, knowing that they wouldn’t do anything to her impenetrable skin. Although, sometimes they poked out of her clothing and spooked her parents, until they realized who they were looking at.

“Good, **alhamdulillah**. Business is great.”

“ **Alhamdulillah** ,” she mimicked and methodically combed through her long, blonde hair with her fingers to remove any snags and get everything back in place. She moved on to putting the groceries in order once she was done fixing herself and her father sat on one of the kitchen islands.

“How was school?”

“Good, good. I turned in my essay. The one I spent all last night trying to finish. And tomorrow I’m going to be tutoring some people, so I won’t be home for dinner.”

They spent more time talking with each other, until a woman walked into the kitchen as well, pulling up her sleeves and tying her own blonde hair back.

“ **Salam** , mama,” Aisha greeted happily and bent down to kiss her mother’s cheeks sweetly.

“ **Salam** , baby,” she answered back. “I’m going to do dinner now.”

With that prompt, Aisha went to the sink and washed her hands. As they worked harmoniously to make dinner for the entire family, Aisha’s father moved on to the living room and turned the TV on. After watching a few channels and going back an forth between them, he finally flipped to Al Jazeera, a channel well known in all the Middle Easterners and Arabic speaking households.

“-only at Al Jazeera. Yesterday, sightings of a blue and red blur has appeared over the city. It has been recorded by multiple witnesses in Metropolis and has become a popular topic amongst extraterrestrial theorists online. Others speculate whether or not it is an experiment released by the US government or threat made by other nations. Here are some clips...”

Curious, Aisha wiped her hands with a cloth her and went to the living room. She stood behind the couch where her father was sitting and leaned her body against it. Just like the reporter had said, there were videos of an indistinct shape of red and blue flying at insane speeds across the screen and then disappearing into the blue sky.

Her father looked up at her. When she glance down, his slightly suspicious gaze met her own.

“No, it wasn’t me, I swear.” She immediately denied with her hands up.

He turned back around and squinted at the screen. “Then what is it? A drone? A plane? A UFO?”

“Who knows? Could be anything.”

“Hmm, well what are the chances that it might be someone who can fly like you?”

She shrugged, even though that was the first thought that her mind jumped to when she saw the first clip. 

For the rest of the day, as she helped with the process of dinner and then left to do some studying, her mind kept going back to what she had seen on TV. Whatever it was would have been as fast as her and probably could go at faster speeds from what she had seen. It made her incredibly curious and made her wonder about all the scenarios where it could be a person moving that quickly and if she could possibly ever meet them.

Hours into the night, when she had finished all her studying and assignments, Aisha watched more videos and read more articles on the blur. It quickly had become an internet phenomenon, with people speculating and debating with each other over the topic. From the information she had accumulated, she found that it had appeared mostly in Metropolis and occasionally other places around the world.

Then she stumbled across one article, referred to by a pretty obsessive person arguing in a blue/red blur thread, and it was a very small one written by a news site with barely any online presence. A young girl had been saved from being sexually abused by a family friend almost a month ago. The only thing that the small girl could recount was that she was whisked away by a man in blue with a red cape from her home as soon as the pedophile cornered her in her room and she began screaming. The pedophile was found gagged and bound in front of the police station only a minute later while the girl was deposited in a Child Protective Service building with a note depicting what had occurred.

Police officials weren’t able to connect the hand writing to anyone and were baffled by the whole ordeal. In the end, they chalked it up as the girl being traumatized and had created the superhero scenario in her mind to cope.

Aisha closed her laptop shut and laid across her bed, staring up at her bedroom ceiling. Her heart raced with excitement and so she spent a while there thinking, unable to go to sleep.

After an hour laying in her bed feeling restless, she got up and went downstairs. The young woman slipped her shoes on and left the house. Once she made it to a secluded part of the neighborhood, she focused her attention to any heartbeats and breathing to determine if any people were awake and also changed her sight to x-ray vision. Glancing around in an instant, she made sure that no one was lingering at their windows in the middle of the night or walking around in the darkness.

Once she found everything clear, she lifted into the air and zipped across the sky, enjoying the beautiful night sky and cool air. In the process, her hoodie whipped back and revealed all her hair, but she made not effort to cover herself again—knowing that there was no one around to witness her without a head covering.

She flew across the city, making sure that she went in a speed that was fast enough to not allow her to be spotted by the human eye.

Now that she realized it, the blur probably got caught by eye witnesses purposefully. If they were anything like her, they could have easily avoided being caught on camera, so why did they want the attention? She didn’t know exactly why, but she thought about it some more and came to the conclusions that they were either slowly revealing themselves to the public or and/or warning people with their existence. Assuming that it was sentient of course, and that the girl from the article had been truthful with her description.

Slowing down when she spotted land, she turned herself upright and let her feet fall onto a sandy beach of Morocco that was completely unavailable to the public with all the very high cliffs surrounding it. After removing her shoes and socks, she set them aside on a large boulder that sat against the rocky cliff and dug her toes into the warm sand. It wasn’t as fine as the ones she had experienced in the west coast of the US, but she like it all the same.

Slowly, she dipped her toes into the freezing waters of the Atlantic Ocean, taking the account of the cold—but harmless for her—temperatures against her skin and wondering how it would feel on a normal person. Aisha quickly dismissed the thought, having had repeated different versions of it countless of times in her life. Instead, she turned her attention to the ocean once more and descended into the deep waters—ocean rising steadily as she walked deeper and deeper.

When her entire head went under, immediately her eyesight became accustomed to the blurriness caused by the water and sharpened so that she could see through the darkness in detail. She also released the air that had been trapped in her lungs unnecessarily from the breathing that she taught herself to maintain subconsciously. It bubbled and floated to the surface in an instant, and she could hear it popping as it was released into the air.

If Aisha wanted, she could have used her limbs to swim through the water like a normal human, but decided there was no point since she had her flight to her advantage. So she drifted along as if she were in the air, taking in the coral reefs and various kinds of fish that were offered in Morocco’s ocean.

Nothing was amiss, and multiple times she stopped and had taken in a sight of very rare fish that were only found in the deepest parts of the ocean, where she soon found herself to be in after nearly an hour of rapid swimming.

As she went further and deeper into the ocean where no human had ever ventured before, she noticed the pressure begin to weigh down on her form but felt little when she continued. To be honest, she never felt such a thing before and quickly became interested on the sensation, so she swam a little faster. It built quickly, until there came a point where it seemed like her own hands where pushing down against her shoulders, back, and legs.

In the end, what made her leave was the pitch darkness. It was like no matter how many times she blinked it still felt like, for the first time in her life, she needed to squint in order to see properly. Although she could see pretty well, all things considered, Aisha felt uncomfortable having to strain her sight. It was like trying to see something with a magnifying glass but still finding the enlarged image blurry—and dark.

With a hand raised above her, she zoomed through the water and broke through the surface in no time, laughing as she effortlessly made it into the air but choked as the water in her lungs tried expel from her mouth. Once more, she removed the contents of her lungs and coughed harshly to get rid of any remaining liquid. It wasn’t irritating but it definitely bothered her when some of it made its way to her mouth and she had to taste fishy, salty flavor of ocean water.

Aisha decided that she had fear fill of adventure, and mentally checked off her journey from the places she wished to explore. So far, she had been to most of South Africa but had never really been up in the north. The only time that she remembered ever visiting North Africa was to visit the pyramids.

As she flew higher into the sky, she noticed how her clothing stuck to her body but knew it would become dry in an instant during flight.

The air whipped through her clothes as she made her way beck to the beach, drying everything, including her long hair, as she had predicted. Not even bothering to land back on the beach when she arrived to retrieve her belongings, she plucked her shoes mid-air and left. Along the way, she slipped her socks and shoes on and then returned to fly horizontally, since it allowed her to travel slightly more easily—and felt more natural that way in her opinion.

Nearing the shores of the US, she quickened her pace until she made it into her bedroom within a second. The disruption in her momentum caused all her hair to be thrown forward and find its place all over her face. She sputtered and whipped it back, wishing there was a solution to keeping her hair bound and out of the way when she flew. She tried everything, from using a hair tie—which loosened the moment she took flight—to braiding her hair to using a piece of metal wire instead of a hair tie, but every single time, her hair found a way to get free.

As a woman who took much pride in her long, silky, blonde hair, she was completely against the idea of cutting all off, especially since it took years of growing and grooming to get it nearly reaching mid-thigh. Blessed with good genes, her hair always stayed glossy and soft, and she had gotten a lot of admiration from it before she had decided to adorn the hijab.

Aisha walked to her drawers and picked out another set of pajamas and went to shower. Unfortunately, her time in the water left her feeling a little dry from all the salt that dried on her skin, but after a quick rinse, she felt clean.

Feeling more relaxed than she had been in the beginning of the night, she went under her covers and sinked back into her bed.

It took no time for her to dose off—not exactly sleeping since her body didn’t require it—but loosing a bit of consciousness and allowing time to pass rapidly. The young woman could go on for days without sleep, and yes, she had tried it before, but the third day alway ended up with her feeling slow mentally. Quickly, she realized that her body was an endless battery, always charged and ready to go, but her mind needed rest like everyone other human—although it could function better and for days longer than a normal person who tried to go on for days without sleep.

She would only get about three hours of rest until it was time for prayer, so she made sure to ‘sleep’ as lightly as she could, aware that if she slept too deep, she would definitely sleep through fajr.

Then an audible pop sounded off in the distance, close to her home. Aisha immediately sat up and zoomed to her window. It was the noise of air being displaced too quickly, too unnaturally. It alarmed her because it was a noise eerily similar to the one she made when she was standing somewhere and then flew or ran at an incredible speed in an instant.

There was nothing in the air when she scanned thoroughly, and nothing in the streets. For a while, she just stood there, hoping something or someone would appear, but too scared to go out herself and investigate. Scared that she would find something other than the blur and red blur, but more specifically, a person dressed in red in blue who was superpowered like her, and face gut-wrenching disappointment.

For most of her youth, she had dreamed of finding someone like herself. At first, it was someone she could play with without having to worry about restraining her strength and bruising them, then it transitioned to someone who she could could simply talk to during her teenage years, but in the end, adulthood forced her to start thinking logically and dismiss those hopes before she spent the rest of her life waiting for someone who would never show up.

But now, with the appearance of the blur, all those hopes quickly reappeared and left her grasping at them. So she stood there at her bedroom window, waiting for a sign, a movement, anything really. She held her breathe anxiously for minutes until there was another pop in the distance. She released it loudly and grasped the ledge tightly.

She wasn’t going crazy and it wasn’t part of her imagination. Although that moment of relief left instantly the moment she heard whatever it was that made the noise travel in her direction.

Aisha gasped loudly when it flickered past her home, but it didn’t end up being an “it”. “It” was actually a person. A man. In a blue skintight suit and red cape. Muscular and Caucasian with incredibly dark hair.

Not a millisecond after she gasped, he paused momentarily and looked back—straight at her. His face turned to an expression of bewilderment, completely and utterly confused because to the rest of the world, time nearly had stopped, and it was impossible for someone to see him, let alone meet his gaze straight on.

They watched each other for what let like minutes, when it wasn’t even close to a second that passed.

“Are you like me?” She spoke quickly, too fast for the human mind to comprehend her words, but by the look in his eyes, he heard and understood her words clearly.

He paused, and time resumed as it was. Whole seconds ticking away as he stared at her and tried to formulate words. “Who are you?” He eventually let out.

Realizing that they were about to have a conversation, she flickered out and into existence wearing her hijab. He became startled at the action and his eyes kept going back and forth from her face to her headscarf.

“I’m Muslim.” She explained with an awkward smile. At least he didn’t catch her sleeveless or in shorts, or worse, a tank top without a bra, she thought with relief.

“Oh,” he answered with no small amount of perplexment. Again, they stood there for some more time simply taking each other in.

“I’m Aisha Arafa, to answer your question,” she prompted almost out of no where. “What’s your name?”

“I’m uhhh, my—my name is...” His battle with himself showed visibly on his face, unsure if it was safe to release his identity to her but also wanting to since it was the first time he had ever met another person like him.

“You can’t tell me.” Aisha decided for him with disappointment once she realized his struggle.

“I—,” He began haltingly but then he steeled himself and went for it, “I’m Clark Kent.”

“Hi, Clark,” she greeted softly with a sweet smile, “It’s really nice to meet you. I’d shake your hand but... you know.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he excused easily, although he was a briefly disappointed at the lost opportunity to test her strength with his own.

Aisha wanted to ask more personal questions, like where he was from and how old he was, but decided to stay safe in order to not scare him away. “Are you—“

“How is it—“

They both stopped and laughed awkwardly. Apparently, they were both as fascinated in each other as each other.

“Go ahead.” Aisha allowed politely.

“Thanks,” Clark told her with a smile, white teeth flashing in the moonlight, “I was going to ask if you were like me and what kind of abilities you had... Since you had no problem seeing me fly and all.”

“Oh, yes, I do have powers.” She turned her head over her shoulder and glanced at her closet. Throwing a thumb towards her room, she said, “Let me get dressed into something more appropriate. Just a moment.”

As soon as he finished his nod, she returned in a long coat and drifted out of her window.

Now that she was entirely revealed and floating across him, he scanned her thoroughly in a completely objective manner but cringed when he realized what he was doing to a woman, and a Muslim woman no less—and too her face. “Excuse me, that was inappropriate. I apologize.” He said with embarrassment and ran his hand through his thick, dark hair—a nervous tick that he had a hard time getting rid off.

She waved it off, not excusing his actions but accepting his apology. “Do you have x-ray vision?” She asked awkwardly after a moment.

Mortified, he shook his head furiously, “I swear I didn’t use it on you. Swear to God.”

Well that answered her question, but left the atmosphere feeling a thousand times more awkward between them.

“I believe you,” she relented and he released a very small breath that rang loudly in her ears. She let out a small breathy laugh and shook her head as she looked down. “It can only get better from this, I think,” she stated with amusement, referring to state of their conversation.

He also gave a humorless laugh that held a hint of self-deprecation, “I don’t know about that. I’m kind of a clown when it comes to women.”

The young woman smiled and shook her head. “I think we should change the subject and put this behind us. I’m more interested in what you can do. Like, can you do this?”

She released a small, but chilled breath that showed like heavy smoke into the air.

Clark gave another small laugh, although this time it was filled with amazement. To answer her question, he did the same thing, their breaths mingling together before their eyes.

To their surprise, Aisha let out a squeal of surprise and slapped a hand over her mouth. They stared at each other, and then began laughing, hers loud and feminine and his booming and deep. After they got a better hold of themselves, they scanned the area to check if anyone had been wakened by the noise—still laughing as the other began once more.

“Okay but can you do this?” Clark looked around and then focused his gaze at the sky. Two bright red beams came from his pupils.

“Yes, yes! I can do that too!” The woman whispered giddily and repeated the same action at the sky.

He grinned at her. “Alright, then one last question. Do you have super strength?”

Aisha looked around and then retrieved a rock the size of her palm, crushing it into fine power before his eyes. “Does this answer your question?”

He gave another breathless laugh. “Oh God, you really are like me. I was low key kinda not expecting that. Is there anything else that you can do?”

She shook her head, “Besides super speed like you, no. You?”

“Nope, all out of party tricks I’m afraid. We’d be really overpowered if we had more abilities than that, don’t you think?” He mused.

“Oh yeah, absolutely,” Aisha agreed wholeheartedly, “Imagine if we added telepathy or telekinesis to the list. Practically invincible—if we aren’t that already.”

They laughed again and Clark swiped a hand over his face. “Well, I wasn’t expecting my night to go on like this.”

“Me neither, but I’m glad I did,” she said with a bashful smile.

He returned it in the same way, feeling shy and appreciative of her kind words.

“Oh,” Aisha gasped when another thought came to her head, “I’m assuming you know of your true origins then, right?” She waved at his clothing. “I’ve seen that type of clothing before.”

“Kryptonian?” He stated carefully. “How?”

“My birth parents left me with some of their technology after they left me behind on this planet. I now a bit about Krypton and our people.”

At this point, Clark didn’t know why he was surprised but he was. “I’m Kal-El of the House of El,” he decided to reintroduce himself.

“And I’m Arz-Or of the House of Or,” she replied back and then to further his shock, she began speaking in rapid Kryptonese. Speaking in twists of vowels and consonants and pronouncing words that almost hurt his bland, English speaking tongue when he thought of trying to say them.

He let her talk until she stopped to wait for him to answer. “I’m really sorry but I don’t speak Kryptonian.”

A little embarrassed, and a little disappointed she had to admit—she really was looking forward to showing off and practicing her Kryptonese with a real life person—she shrugged and told him, “That’s okay. You can learn.” Then after a moment, “I can teach you, if you’d like?”

There was a slow smile that grew on his face as he gazed at her. “I’d really like that.”


	2. Traction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s been a long time since Aisha had seen Superman, and of course their next encounter turns out to be a cliché.

It was the weirdest feeling, watching Clark on TV. Knowing who it was wearing the cape and the person behind all the apprehended criminals and rescued civilians. Bit by bit, he had come out to the public. First, as an indecipherable blue and red blur, then an evolved, yet hazy image of a human—well, human-looking at least—and finally his entire form with clarity—blue outfit, cape, boots and all.

News outlets named him Superman. Understandable, but could they at least get a little creative with the name? Yes, there was an ‘s’ looking symbol on his chest, but really now. Superman?

Her millennial self cringed when she first heard it and felt kind of embarrassed on his behalf. She knew that he would have to deal with that moniker forever, or at least until his real identity was exposed, but even then, it was too catchy for news media to give up.

Over two months had passed since their encounter, and it made Aisha wish that she had gotten some form of contact information from him. But she didn’t, so the future of their relationship depended solely on him. Except that was a bit of a lie because if she wanted, she could have looked for him as well, and with her powers it would be heck of a lot easier to. On the other hand, she wasn’t adamant or obsessed on knowing him and stalking someone was definitely not a line she ever wanted to cross. Her powers already made it invasive for everyone else, and as a conservative person, it made her incredibly uncomfortable being able to hear, see, and smell every detail about them. Just the thought of following someone went against her whole being and made her disgusted.

As much as she sincerely wanted to know him since he was the only Kryptonian she had ever met, and most likely the only one she ever would, she could take a hint. Either he regretted that he revealed his identity to her, didn’t want to know her, or didn’t care enough to—although she kind of doubted the last one, since he too seemed really interested at the time.

So she waited in bated breath for the first few days, hoping that he would make a move. Then days passed and her excitement eventually turned to pure disappointment. By the tenth day, she almost wished that their meeting had never happened because at least she wouldn’t be carrying the awareness of someone like her out there but them not wanting to see her.

Their encounter was losing it’s place in her thoughts everyday, but it didn’t leave her mind. Treasuring it as one of most monumental moments of her life was the last thing she decided to do after one day of heavy contemplation. After that, it was time to move on. As much as she wished differently, she couldn’t place all her hope on someone like Clark who easily ran at a moments notice.

At least she had the opportunity of finding someone like her and being able to meet them. She kept telling herself to feel fortunate of that, and kept repeating it in her head, hoping that if she said it enough she would believe it.

Life continued as it were, almost as if nothing ever happened at all, but she was reminded once and a while when she was saw posts or news articles on her phone. Aisha ignored her TV entirely, not that she watched much anyway, but she did that because she knew that the only topic that channels ever seemed to be interested in was Superman. It saved her from thinking about him and potentially becoming melancholic.

Thankfully, she was up to her ears in exams and had diverted all her attention into studying. Additionally, her job also ended up consuming a lot of time. When she decided to work at her father’s place, it was to have some extra cash in her pocket since he payed for almost everything else, but when her brothers married and founded businesses of their own across the country, it fell of her to shoulder on its responsibilities.

Her father began to assign more tasks to her, like taking care of calls, bills, insurance, health codes, and checking in with other employees. Even though he didn’t explicitly say it, it was obvious that he was preparing her to take over.

As was the sharia of Islam, a portion of the business was supposed to be given to her brothers as well, but they had expressed their willingness to allow her takeover. Already completely occupied with their growing company, they decided that they didn’t really need their father’s small mini market.

“Your sure that you don’t mind.”

“Completely. Don’t worry, Aisha. I can put it down in writing if you want.”

“No, that’s really no—“

“I’m going to call dad’s lawyer and put it under your name.”

“Ibrahim, I’m telling you. That’s unnecessary.”

“If something happens and my baby sister has to find a job to sustain herself, then I have failed as a brother and a Muslim. You need something stable to support you in your life.”

“I still believe that you deserve your share.”

“My share? In a few years, my share will be nothing in comparison to what my company will be making. And, **insha’allah** , if one of the big names buy me and Musa out, it’s gonna be one hell of a pay day.” Ibrahim said to her. “Just take it. In the future, your children will thank you for it.”

Aisha sighed loudly but didn’t argue further. “I love you and I miss you. How is Fatimah and the kids?”

“ **Alhamdullilah** , busy as usual. The kids are fine too.” There was a sound of shuffling paper in the background. “You should come tomorrow. How many days since it’s the last time I’ve seen you?”

“Like 8 or 9 days, but that was because you were at work when I came to visit.”

“I keep telling you that I don’t care if you come see me at the company.”

“That’s unprofessional. Work’s where work is done and home is for family.”

Her brother scoffed. “Who cares! The kids see me all the time.”

With that, she had nothing to say. She couldn’t deny a man from seeing his own children in the business he owned.

“Plus, Musa does the same.” All of a sudden, there was a pitter patter of small feet and hushed scolding in the backdrop. “Abbas, you’re spreading chalk all over the house. Let’s go to the bathroom and clean your hands and feet. Oh wow, your mother is not going to be happy when she sees this.”

“Everything good?” Aisha asked with a smile. She was personally aware of all the antics that her nephews got up to. Babysitting them was always something that she looked forward to because they were such troublemakers and absolutely loved creating havoc in the backyard. When given an object, they were always able to either break something or make it dirty.

Ibrahim laughed, mostly of amusement but also a hint of exasperation. “Yeah, it’s just that Abbas just got some of the chalk for the sidewalk and has been drawing at the patio. **Subhanallah** , I did not know that a child could age so quickly.” Then to Abbas, “Look at your hair, old man. It’s all white!”

“I’m no’ ol’ man! I’m thwee!” A high pitched voice with a heavy lisp came from Aisha’s phone.

“Three is really old in my book.” Ibrahim told him with a laugh in his voice. “It’s about time you get a job, bro.”

Aisha smiled as she listened to them go back and forth, then as Abbas was washed and returned to his mother to be fed lunch.

“Tell the family that I’ll see them on Friday.” She said as she checked the calendar on her phone. There was one appointment in the morning that she had to attend for a health inspection the mini market, but it wouldn’t get in the way of anything considering her alternative method of travel. The rest of the day would be free and so would be the day after, in case she decided to sleep over—which was usually the case because the kids always would beg her to stay longer.

“Sounds good. We were planning to have a barbecue that day so Musa will be over with Umaya.”

“Alright. I’ll see you them. **Salam**.”

“ **Salam**.”

The Muslim woman pocketed her phone and stood up from her seat. After packing all her belongings away, she wore her shoulder bag and left a tip on the table, ignoring the occasional glances made by other customers in the coffee shop.

Being a genetically engineered baby was one of the most bizarre things she had learned about her heritage. Then she also realized that her parents had chosen all her features and characteristics even before her production. Her stunning facial features and tall, yet sturdy, body were carefully and purposefully picked to create the perfect child. This revelation made her feel almost fake, as if she were lying to herself and everyone around, but then she told herself that she wouldn’t be who she was without looking like she did. Instead, she turned her thoughts to gratitude and thanked God for providing her with such a blessed body.

Although with a form like hers also came a lot of unwanted attention. Thankfully, her hijab did a lot to deter men from approaching her, but there also came a few ignorant or cocky men who did anyway. Innocent, but not at all naive, she spoke to them casually and gave hints to leave her alone. Many moved on after that, but there were three men, all in separate circumstances, who were insistent in knowing her. In those instances, she quickly walked away and disappeared into thin air once she was out of line of sight.

It was incredibly uncomfortable to be pursued so doggedly like that. Still, she was comforted with the fact that she was actually the person who had more power in the situation and could easily protect herself if they tried anything.

Yet, there were still times when she felt like a hijab was’t enough and wanted to wear a niqab to protect herself from the piercing stares and repeated glances.

Like now, as a man in the corner of the shop continued to stare at her throughout the call with her brother. She ignored him completely, doing her best to seem uninterested and not give him any opportunity to talk to her.

What got her attention was when she opened the door to exit into the cold night and heard the rustling of his clothing and the creaking of a chair. He was standing the moment she decided to leave, which made her slightly suspicious of his intentions.

Interested in what he was about to do, she decided to bait him and began walking down the darkly lit street where the crowd thinned. To her surprise, he stopped to look around, air whooshing around his head which informed her of the motion, and also began walking her direction. Never the type to assume the worst of anyone, she gave him another chance made a turn into a secluded ally where she waited for him to pass.

He didn’t and stumbled a little when he saw her waiting for him.

Now that she had turned all her attention to him for the first time, she found him at 5’11, the same height as her. He was also slightly better than average looking, with dark eyes and a strong jaw.

He stared at her for a few moments and then came rushing at her. Time slowed down for Aisha as she watched him move to throw her down with his heavy body. It reminded her of being tackled by a footballer and made her think that he did have the wide build for it.

Lightly, she tapped cheek with her fist during his mid-lunge and knocked him out instantly.

His body flew to the side and slammed against the wall with a loud thud, his head also hitting it with a sickening crack. As he slumped on the floor, she cringed at the sight. Quickly, she got over her horror and crouched near his body. Patting at his pockets, she tried to find his wallet or any form of identification.

He only had a wad of cash and his phone that was password protected, so she set that aside next to him.

Aisha scanned him one last time with her x-ray vision and realized that she wasn’t going to get more out of the man. She took her phone from her pocket and pressed the emergency button.

“911, how can I help you?”

“Hi, I’m calling because a man was following me from a coffee shop. He’s here in front of me unconscious. Porten Street, between building 4980 and 4982.”

“Okay, ma’am. I ask that you remove yourself from the premises. We’ll be there shortly.”

Aisha shut her phone before the operator would add another word and waited at the sidewalk not to far from the scene. She stayed behind as the policemen drew out their guns and approached the alley.

Carefully, they searched the unconscious man and then check his vitals. As she took in the situation, there was a swoosh of a cape from behind her and a low, concerned voice. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she said without a hint of fear in her voice.

He took a few steps to stand next to her. There was silence until the officers came up to her and began to ask questions, doing their best to ignore the looming superhero in front of them. They did well taking her statement and had not lost much of the professionalism that they were desperately trying to maintain.

To Clark’s surprise, if his curious glances said anything, Aisha weaved a story about how Superman had come to her rescue from nowhere and saved her from being assaulted. Thankfully, everything added up, from Superman already being on the scene with them at the moment to how the heavy blow on the criminal couldn’t have been thrown by a woman of her stature. She also knew that when they interrogated the criminal, he would not be able to point her out as the one culprit because she had been too fast for him to have seen her do it.

They easily accepted her words and when asked for Superman’s statement, he reiterated everything but from his own perspective just as smoothly. Once it was over, they offered to give her a ride home but Clark immediately spoke up. “I’ll take it from here, officers.”

“Uhh-we, we can’t do that, sir.” One of them told him firmly, albeit a little nervously.

Aisha sighed. “It’s okay. I’ll go with him. Thank you so much for your help, officers.”

They looked at each other hesitantly. One shrugged as the other released a breath and relented. How in the world could they argue with Superman?

With the officer’s dismissal, the two Kryptonians walked in the direction of Aisha’s car.

“How have you been?” She began quietly.

Superman jolted a little, not expecting her to begin that way. “Good, thanks for asking. You?”

“Fine.”

He winced a little at the kindly stated, yet flat answer.

They reached her car in silence and Aisha made her way inside the driver’s seat. She closed the door and then sighed to herself after a moment of “why me”s. Pushing a button on the door made the window wind down and revealed a glum looking Superman.

“I’m sorry.” Where the only two words he said, but she could read the dozen things implied in them.

Aisha stared straight into his crystal, blue eyes. Even though the hurt she tried so hard to kill came rushing back to her all at once, she still couldn’t ignore his sincere apology. “It’s okay.”

With nothing else to say, she turned on her car with the engine breaking the night’s silence. “I wish you the best of luck.”

Clark realized the resignation in her tone of voice and pursed his lips. “Thanks, you too.” Then he disappeared, but Aisha tracked him with her keen eyes until he truly had vanished into the sky.

In her mind, she accepted this to be the last and final time that she would ever see him. There

On her way driving home, she felt a little numb as everything had caught up to her. Her mind kept flipping from the near assault to her interaction with the other Kryptonian. Thoughts turning darker and darker when she began imagining scenarios where she didn’t have powers to her disposal.

There were actually many times where she had gotten in the middle when other people where being harassed or assaulted, but she never thought she would ever have been on the receiving end of it. It was still shocking to think that if it where any other woman, they probably wouldn’t have gotten out of it unscathed.

Those thoughts consumed her mind as she made it home and made a cup of tea for herself. Her actions were methodical as she stared blankly at the process.

“Aisha?” Her mother questioned when she found her in the kitchen holding a cooling cup of tea limply in her hands.

“Hmm?” She turned to her mother distractedly.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, ma.” She replied softly.

Her mother moved on to open the fridge, which must have meant her dismissal of the topic, and took out a plate of leftovers. “How was your day?”

“Great. Everything was perfect.”

Just perfect.


	3. Attempts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aisha learns of her linage and attempts to visit the mothership.

“The House of El is well known the scientific community. Kal-El’s ancestor, Jel-El, had made many groundbreaking discoveries in morphology and physiology,” Came a smooth feminine voice over Aisha’s shoulder as the young Muslim swiped through the hologram in front of her.

“Kryptonian biology, right? Not human.”

“No, of course not. Although human biology was studied the moment we had found Earth’s existence, along with much other life systems found uniquely on this planet.”

Aisha stopped her investigations and turned to look at the hologram of a tall, blonde woman, who looked remarkably like her, standing a few feet away. “How similar are we to humans then? If we have exactly the same organs, limbs, and features then we can’t possibly that unrelated to each other.”

“Of course, there had been speculations that the human race has branched out from our own people, but for millennias scientists have had too much evidence debunking that idea. Our cells are far too different from each other for us and them to be from the same species. Yet, with the recent knowledge that it is possible for humans and kryptonians to procreate, there is a large chance that it is possible.“

“I don’t know, it just seems too coincidental. Everything about us are exactly the same, except that we process energy directly from light sources like the sun and humans don’t—well, not at the level we do.”

“Many of our scientists would agree with you in that regard. The chance of us looking exactly the same as each other is infinitesimal, but if you look at other species like the Martians, Amazons, Thanagarians, Astrons, or Belishin, you will find that they look hold the same humanoid features, and can communicate and think just as we do. We aren’t as unique as you would believe.”

Aisha had to smile and concede to her point. There were many races that existed beyond humans and Kryptonians, and there was actually quite a number who could pass for human if it weren’t for perhaps the color of their skin—not to be taken as a racist comment, take the Martians for example—or an extra limb attached to them.

“Ha! I didn’t think that I would be arguing biology or evolution with my daughter when I downloaded my memories.” The woman thought aloud, ruefully.

“You didn’t know that you would have to leave me behind on Earth on the first place, so expect a lot of conversations about this kind of stuff.”

The blonde woman, also known as Jan-Or, Aisha’s biological mother, gave a tight smile in response.

Almost immediately when Aisha found the existence of Kryptonian technology, and with that her parents’ replicated personalities, she asked why they had been gone since her birth. A lengthy and detailed explantation came right after that which had answered all of her questions.

First, they had introduced their race and why they were different from humans, their advanced civilization that they had lived in, and then finally delved into the matters that led to her being left behind on a planet so far away from theirs. Her biological father, Lew-Or, had been a type of solo-journalist who had created his own individual news outlet for Kyptonians and made his views clear on the mass genocide made upon other planets that held sentients with higher thought processes like themselves. Even though his opinions and broadcasts were highly unpopular with Kryptonians, who were known supremacists, the Kryptonian government did not appreciate the small—albeit millions out of tens of billions of people—who rallied behind him and began to protest against the murder of these innocent, defenseless beings. What ended up being the breaking point was when Lew-Or had found that the invasion of planets had not only been because of the harvesting of the core’s energy, but because many Kryptonian families and businesses had succeeded in making an abundance amount of profit out of it. Leaking names of major and minor corrupt government officials and people of status and wealth encouraged Kryptonians spread ideas of anti-racism, life preservation, and bringing those people to justice—which the people of power did not appreciate the slightest.

Unwillingly appointed as leader of this budding movement, Aisha’s father had to leave with his pregnant wife from their home solar system and live on the run after receiving many death threats from the government, supremest groups, and from the profiteers from the occupation of different planets. Of course, once the information about the threats, the people involved, and her parents fleeing was released somehow to the public, there was a huge uproar and tens of millions of people left their homes to protest against the injustice done to them and force the government to change.

Still, the individuals caught of their illegal activity were determined to see them dead and had paid mercenaries to chase them across the galaxy to finish them off. Since it was common knowledge that Kryptonians gained powers through the sun, they had run off to the furthest galaxy they could that contained a sun potent enough to give them abilities to protect themselves.

Meanwhile, in their attempt to get away, Aisha was delivered... but their happiness did not last long. The mercenaries had caught up with them nearly a year after her birth and forced her parents to send Aisha in a cyro-craft, a spaceship that contained chambers for cyrostasis, ahead of them with most of the power from their vehicle in a last ditch attempt to get her there safely. They hoped to join her there if they ever survived the paid killers, but they hadn’t. As their spaceship battled the mercenaries in space, they were killed after an unsuccessful attempt to eject from their ship and make to safety without them knowing.

There on Earth, she was found by an old Spanish man who live with his young adult daughter in the never ending hills of Covarrubias, Spain. The young woman, Lisa she was called, ended up adopting her and then married to Aisha’s father Ahmed after moving to Madrid to study in the Complutense University of Madrid and meeting him there.

Santiago, Aisha’s adoptive grandfather, stored the cyro-craft in his wine cellar and left it there untouched after a few attempts to see what was inside. The first and only time he had been able to was when it opened involuntarily to reveal a baby girl inside, and once he had removed her, it shut closed and never opened again.

Aisha remembers how her mother relayed the entire thing, expressing her shock when she had came back from her job to find her father in the house holding and feeding a baby. From that day forward, she became the mother of the abandoned child and made a life that included her.

Only two years after marrying, Lisa and Ahmed adopted two more boys, Ibrahim and Musa, orphans from Egypt. Together, they moved to America and lived there happily. Ahmed and Lisa built their business from almost nothing with their sons eventually stepping up to the plate once they were in their late teens—which took off a lot of their financial burdens.

Aisha in turn grew up having already known that she was adopted and aware of how she was found. Truthfully, what helped was the fact that she had her brothers to lean on whenever she felt conflicted. Since they were all in the same boat, there wasn’t really any feelings of jealously or displacement within their family. Of course, that didn’t mean that Aisha didn’t go through moments where she felt like a foreigner amongst humans in general. She did, and there were times where her strength and intense senses caused her grief and made her feel tired of hiding her true self.

Inquiries about her powers arose around her early teens to which her parents responded by eventually allowing her to visit her grandfather in Spain for a summer. There, she met the man who had found her early morning, just before the sun rose, and decided to bring her into the family. Santiago showed her the spacecraft that brought her to Earth, which then lead to her finding about the other spacecraft that followed after her.

The female Kryptonian remembered the day when the cyro-craft opened. It almost seemed like a thing out of movies witnessing it turn on and then a voice coming out of almost no where. Koren, the AI introduced itself as, and after answering many of her questions it showed her the coordinates of another spacecraft—its own mothership.

Although it still was floating about in outer space, Koren placated her by stating that it was possible for her to get there. Too her immense surprise, the super computer did not suggest using the cyro-craft to get there though.

“You sure that this is possible? It really doesn’t seem like it.” A fourteen year old Aisha questioned again to the ever patient AI.

“Yes, Arz Yew-Or. The only thing that will be able be afflicted by damage will be your clothing.”

The teenager whipped her head around to stare at the computer in surprise and then distaste at the thought. “Nope, no. I will not be floating around space nude. Or meeting my parents butt-naked.”

“Unfortunately, you will need to achieve a high velocity to arrive at the mothership in a short period of time. Since you don’t have sources to a Kryptonian suit that will withstand the journey, your clothing will have to face the consequences of such speed if you want to get there within a favorable timeframe.” They countered cooly. “There is also the option of taking the blanket from your infant-hood with you. It is made of Kryptonian fabric and will not deteriorate during your time in outer-space.”

Aisha thought of the soft, white blanket that her grandfather showed her when he had explained how she was found. She then flickered out and into being with said blanket in her hand. “This one you mean?”

“Yes.”

It looked to be only four by three feet. Only long enough to cover what really mattered—if she weren’t Muslim that is. “There’s nothing else? Maybe something even a little longer?”

“No.”

Okay then.

Aisha tried the blanket over her clothing and stifled a sigh when it only covered her chest and just above the knee. When she tried tying it to see how it would hold, she ended up being surprised at how durable it felt to her. With most fabrics, she had to deal with them extremely delicately in order to not rip or stretch them, or leave a permanent wrinkle.

“Won’t it open during flight?” She asked as she tugged experimentally on the knots she made to tie the blanket around her as a makeshift dress.

“It is possible, but you can hold onto it to keep in place.”

That wasn’t really the answer she wanted to hear but she let it go.

After untying the blanket and folding it, she collected all the courage she had in her 5’7 body and left the former wine cellar. Now the only thing left to do was convince her grandfather to let her travel into space. No pressure.

The girl walked up the stairs and went straight to the kitchen when she heard a heart beating slightly faster than normal and the rustle of a cloth against a smooth surface. When she looked in, she found a thin woman using a rag to clean the counters roughly.

Holding onto the doorway, Aisha broke the silence. “Buenos días, Señora Gabriella.”

“Buenos días, mijita. Lunch is going to be ready in about an hour. Please tell your grandpapa; he’s in the garden now.” She informed in her thick Spanish accent after pausing on one particular stain that was beginning to get on her nerves.

“Okay, gracías. I was going to him anyway.” The teen threw over her shoulder as she hurried to catch her grandfather before he moved on.

Outside, she followed the noises of a rapid heartbeat, heavy breathing, and a shovel pounding into the ground—scraping rocks and ripping roots apart.

“There you are, papa.” Aisha said as she stopped a few feet away. She watched him for a few seconds and then nudged his arm. “Here, let me help you.”

“Gracías, amor.” He told her breathlessly as he stepped to the side and wiped his face with the handkerchief he kept in his pocket.

The girl slid the shovel into the earth easily and scooped the dirt to the side. Santiago watched with an impressed expression as the hole grew larger and deeper in less than a minute—work that would have taken him about 20 minutes to achieve, struggle and all.

His granddaughter had helped him a lot during her time spent with him. Many things around the house and farm had been repaired because once he realized how her abilities could be utilized, and since there was not much she could do after boring herself to death with her laptop, she spent most of her time distracting herself with the farm life.

What should have taken months for Santiago to fix and clean around the farm got repaired in less than a week when the teen decided to put her electronics away and venture outside.

‘Perhaps I should ask her parents to allow her here every summer,’ the man thought amusedly to himself with hands on his hips.

Aisha stepped back and stabbed the shovel into the ground, pulling it back up a little when she realized she applied too much pressure and buried it way over its shoulder.

“That good enough?”

Her grandfather looked at the hole closely. “Mm, yes. Looks good.”

Aisha leaned on the shovel, placing her chin on top of the handle. “Hey, Grandpa...” She began tentatively. “I was talking to Koren just now...”

“Yes?”

“Um, uhhh—“ Aisha quickly lost the nerve to explain, especially when she realized how stupid she sounded when she tried structure her words in her brain.

“Go on, tell me,” Santiago said with an encouraging smile.

“Okay,” she sighed, “I know how crazy this sounds and you’d never let me do this but I have to try.”

His brows raised and his smile became wider. Even before he had heard of what she wanted to say, he was already amused by her warning and wondered what the docile girl could possibly have wanted for her to become so hesitant and nervous.

“I was talking to Koren just now and they told me that there’s a mothership out there in space. If I want to meet my parents and learn more about my people then—“

Santiago’s heart jumped to his throat. “Wait, what? Your parents? They are alive?”

“No, no. They would only be recorded memories made into algorithms, which means that every response is calculated so that it would be like something they would say or do in real-life.”

“But that means that they’re not alive, right?”

“Um...to an extent. Koren told me that they don’t have feelings like us, although they can think, react, and evolve as we do.”

“Okay...so you want to meet them.”

“...Yes.”

Her grandfather gave her an uncertain look. “In outer-space.”

Aisha scrubbed her hands over her face. “Ugggghhhhh. I know how insane it sounds to you but you have to look at the facts here.” She waved her hands over her body. “I’m practically invincible and don’t need to breathe. I’m also really, really fast and would get there a lot faster than any transportation vehicle you can think of.”

He scoffed and gave a hollow laugh. “I can’t even believe that you’d think that I’d give you permission to go to _space_! What kind of grandfather would ever allow their grandchild to leave this planet willingly? No, I’m sorry. This is not possible.”

Before her grandfather could turn to leave, Aisha zipped to his side and hold onto his arm. “Listen, there’s literally nothing out there that could hurt me, Grandpa! I’d be as safe in space as I would be here!”

“Aisha, I am one of the very few people who actually know that aliens exist. And if someone as powerful as you can exist, there is a very good possibility that there are some incredibly strong creatures that live in the universe right now. If there are more of your kind roaming around our galaxy and happens to come across you, who knows what could happen. They might even take you away since you still are just a child!”

As he ranted angrily, Aisha began to come to tears. With a wavering voice she said, “But I just want to meet my parents. That’s all I want.”

Santiago deflated when he saw her wipe her tears and brought her carefully into his arms. “Preciosa, I can’t let you go. I love you too much for you to leave. Living hundreds of kilometers away from you is hard enough so imagine what I would feel if you where thousands— _millions_ away.“

The teenager nodded as she cried silently in his embrace and after a while she croaked a muffled, “Okay.”

He sighed deeply as he petted her soft hair. “I love you, Aisha. Very deeply.”

“I love you too, Grandpa.”


	4. Chapter 4

Aisha rubbed the white blanket on her lap and used her advanced vision to examine the fabric thoroughly. Each individual thread was finely woven into each other, making a pattern that she had never seen before on any piece of cloth or material. She tried pulling at it and was interested in how everything expanded and reacted, then snapping back to its perfect state the moment she let go. It was an absolute masterpiece. Aisha couldn’t even imagine how its inventor could have ever imagined something so genius.

Over the last days spent during the vacation with her grandfather, she continued to visit Koren in the empty wine cellar and assist her grandfather around the farm whenever he needed it, but recently she found interest stolen by the one item left of her past.

The item in her grasp had gone through many experiments. Anything that she thought would test its limits, she did. Extreme temperatures and brunt force—none of it made any impact. It held up incredibly well, so well that she even almost used her laser vision on it in a final attempt to gauge its durability but thought better than to push her luck.

During the trials, her mind whirled with ways of which she could put the fabric to use. Preferably as clothing that she could wear when she wanted to use her powers in order to avoid going through her man-made clothing like they were tissue. Unfortunately, there were many issues with the idea, primarily the fact that she didn’t that the technology to cut the fabric without damaging it. The other problem was that there was very little fabric for her to do anything with. Considering the fact that she was very modest with what she wore and would not accept less than covering nearly everything up to her neck, there was little she could do with a 3 by 4 foot blanket.

As amazing the blanket was, there was an issue with how much potential it had but how impossible it would be to make a practical piece of clothing out of it.

By the end, the only positive thing that actually came out of the venture was that she found a new interest in her own powers, but this also resulted an intense desire to go travel far distances to achieve complete seclusion. In her isolation, she would be able push her powers beyond the threshold she maintained her entire life.

The temptation to sneak out at night became overwhelming at times. There were nights when she would just lie in bed, eyes staring at the ceiling or walls of her room and heart pounding with anticipation. The past two nights in particular were difficult for her to restrain herself, but tonight was something else entirely. There was nothing that could catch her attention and her mind kept skipping back to imagining wild scenarios.

Aisha stood up suddenly, flinging the cover off of herself in the process.

She groaned silently when her feet led her to her bedroom window. It was pitch dark outside, but the clear, wide sky and shining stars above her began to crumble her control.

Biting her lip, she glanced back and forth between outside and her grandfather’s slumbering form two rooms away.

_Stop it, stop it_ , she snarled to herself as she walked back to her bed. Instead of lying down she lifted white blanket off her mattress and tied it around her, using her incredible strength to tie knots that wouldn’t unravel mid-journey.

After taking one last long look at her grandfather using her x-ray vision, she slipped through her window drifted above her home. Unwillingly, she scoffed when she realized that she was enacting the cliché scene where the super-powered adolescent would escape home to discover or practice their powers.

_I’m a walking cliché to be honest_ , she thought to her self. Super strength, super speed, invulnerability, x-ray vision, laser vision—everything about her was straight out of a comic book. Not to mention that she was a tall, blonde, blue-eyed, female _alien_. So in short, she was a comic artist’s dream protagonist. The only thing that was saving her from becoming the All-American super-power trope was how she was raised and her religion.

The young teenager scoffed at herself in bitter amusement as her journey across Spain ended and she floated down from the sky into a wide, grassy field with trees planted sparingly around. It wasn’t necessarily quiet, since her acute hearing wouldn’t allow her to hear in a volume any less than astronomical, but it felt like for the first time, all man-made noises were lowered to a considerable level. The nearest town was over 60 miles away, which gave her flexibility in the amount of restraint she could let go and make as much noise as she liked.

After quickly checking the area, she decided that it was the best that she would be able to find within distance to her home. She also marked a tree far away from her starting point lightly with her heat vision, although it wasn’t needed since she had near photographic memory, but it felt appropriate since she was about to test her powers.

Making sure that the knots were still secured, Aisha tugged on the with a bit of force and was satisfied when they held. She then dug her foot into the earth, toes going through like butter and fabrics of her shoe tearing easily. In this instance, she didn’t care because there was no way her clothing was going to come out unscathed as she released the full extent of her abilities.

“Okay, first test. Reach the tree as fast as you can.” She told to herself. “Aaaa-nd...go.”

The last letter ‘go’ was still in the process of vibrating through sound waves as Aisha pushed herself forward and left a few small craters behind. Everything became startlingly clear as she ran, as if her mind had become ten times more sharper and aware of her own body. Time as she knew it also was slower, as if she were in one of the Matrix movies that had been released not long ago. Of course, she wasn’t surprised by this since she had used her powers and gotten the same results before, but it was never to the extent where almost everything seemed like it was in a standstill.

_Faster, faster_ , she encouraged herself. It felt like minutes she had experienced minutes passing by before she made it to the tree and when her enhanced mind slowed to its normal rate, she still heard her own words finally ending in the distance.

“I’m faster than the speed of sound!” The superhuman jumped into the air and pumped her fists. “Holy crap, holy crap! YES! YES! YEEEEEESS!!!”

Grinning to herself, she twirled mid-air until she remembered something. Looking up into the night sky, she said aloud, “Alhamdullilah. Thank you, Allah. Thank you for everything. Insha’allah, this power will only be used for you to do good.”

After a few more fist pumps and aerial feats in the air, she finally came down to Earth—in a literal sense—and decided to take a look at the scene and review the trial in her mind.

One of the first things she noticed was her clothing, everything including the blanket, was surprisingly intact when she looked down to inspect them.

“Wait, what?” She said aloud in confusion. There were no tears, burns, or signs of erosion—a common after-effect when she used her powers. “Oooohkayyy?” She muttered as she tugged lightly on her sweatshirt under the blanket. Everything looked like is was still in one piece and she was grateful for that, but she didn’t hold her hopes up. There was little chance that it would last through a few more rounds, especially when she started to move onto testing her strength.

So her clothing only got destroyed when she went at a lower speed but not when she went at her fullest? Why? It didn’t really make sense to her, but she eventually assumed that friction was still affecting to her clothing during her slower speeds but when she was faster, she reached a point that nothing could effect her. Like in a car crash, the person going at a faster speed crashing the other car wouldn’t be affected, but the one being crashed would. In this instance, she was the crasher, with everything, including atoms themselves, being bounced from her form and leaving her and her clothing intact.

However, she was no expert in this field of physics and wasn’t sure if her assumptions had a grain’s worth of possibility, so she tentatively set them as her leading explanation after having no other.

Over and over again, she continued to race across the field—eventually going back home to grab her watch.

When she was once again at the starting point in the field, she waited for the moment the hand struck the next second exactly.

2:45:37

2:45:38

And she was off.

Only this time, she wasn’t planning to get to just stop at the marker. No, she wanted to see how many times she could run back and forth from start to finish before the second was over.

Soon, one lap became 10, then 50, 100, 200, 1000, and eventually passing the 5,000th.

Aisha had to look at her watch countless of times to make sure that she wasn’t fooling herself when she ran, but the hand still at 38 seconds encouraged her that it wasn’t a mistake.

Soon, around 11,100 lap or so, she realized that the second was’t going to be over anytime soon, and halted at the finish point. As soon as time resumed to its natural state, 2:45:38 became 2:45:39, but Aisha knew that within those milliseconds, she could’ve completed countless of laps and might’ve made it to thousands more than what she achieved.

As Aisha stood by the tree she marked, one question remained. How fast did she run? Although she did not have an accurate number of times she ran to and forth the beginning and end, she had at least something she could calculate.

After another journey back home to steal her grandfather’s measuring tape from his work shed, she excitedly flew back to her spot and began measuring the entire length that she ran.

In the end, she made her calculations in the dirt with a finger and found that she ran nearly 13,400 meters in one second.

Aisha released a slow, shuddering breath. _13,000 meters_ , she thought numbingly. _Just how fast is that? Was it anywhere near light speed?_

_How fast would I be at full speed?_ Now that was something she was very interested in finding out.

It was a wonder what was held for her in the future when her body completely matured. She was sure there was at least a little more that she could she grow into in height department, and that inch or two could have an impact in her speed.

As the young Muslim grew, it became obvious that there was a correlation between her limbs becoming longer and more sculpted with muscle and how her abilities grew more powerful at the same time. Even now, she could tell that she was much stronger now than she had been one year before, since it was getting much easier for her to have a lapse of judgement over her strength, which caused many issues in her household over the years. Her parent’s heckled her for ruining so many clothes, toys, furniture, dishes, and even the house they lived in—thinking that if she was growing then her maturity should’ve allowed her to be more careful about her surroundings. Unfortunately that was not the case.

Her powers seemed to be getting more and more out of hand, especially since they were growing at a rate where it was getting hard for her to keep up on learning how to keep them on a leash. On the other hand, she was not unaware that she was currently going through puberty and that her emotions weren’t exactly stable in the moment, which also had a play in her less than favorable restraint.

Aisha clenched her fist, watching and listening to her skin and muscles pull over the bones of her hand. Now that she had a little understanding of how fast she was, she was ready to move on to measuring her strength.

Yet, she had concerns about how loud her investigation would end up being. It was only luck that she was fast enough to move without disturbing sound waves much, but it would be impossible to if she tried striking against the earth.

She glanced around anyway, her desire to test her brawn superseded the need to stay covert.

A quick punch against the soft earth was intended to gauge how loud she hit, but it also made her realize how uncomfortable it felt to be hitting downwards. Instead of crouching and hitting below, she floated up and tilted her body so it held parallel over the ground.

After tying her hair back since it kept falling over her shoulders, she backed up a little more into the sky. When she made it a good distance away, she darted forward with her arm slung back.

_BOOM._

The earth trembled ferociously as huge clumps of rock and dirt ripped through the air.

_Oh._

_My._

_God._

She flinched from the sheer volume of everything exploding around her––rocks crumbling in the air and then slamming back to earth. When she retreated back into the air and took a good look at the damage, her eyes grew wide and jaw hung from her face. Aisha weakly brought her trembling, smoking fist up to her face, looking back and forth from her limb to the damage in front of her.

Evaluating her strength turned out to be a very, very bad idea.

Like, _super_ bad.

There was a large crater spanning over a dozen meters located in the place her hand had been occupying a few moments before. Around it, huge pieces of dirt had shot up from the dirt and almost five meters into the air—never mind the other boulders and clumps of dirt strewn throughout the field.

It looked like a meteor hit and altered the landscape permanently.

_Someone definitely heard that_ , she thought with a deep sense of dread pulling at the pit of her stomach.

Aisha slapped her hands over her head. “Oh god. _Grandpa_.”

There wasn’t a moment to lose, so she rushed at full speed towards home and threw herself under her covers. Her grandfather was already up and rushing to her room right when her blankets settled over her and she closed her eyes.

“Aisha! Aisha! Did you hear that? It sounded like a bomb!”

She leaned up on her arm and pretended to look at him blearily. “Yeah, but it’s really far away. I could tell.”

Santiago looked momentarily conflicted until his resolve visually strengthened on his face. He rushed to his granddaughter’s bedside and coaxed her out of bed. With his arm protectively over her shoulder—a reflexive move that he made even though he was fully aware of how much more fragile he was compared to her—he shoved a pillow under his arm and ripped the covers out of her bed and pulled her out of the room.

“We’re going done to the basement to sleep there tonight. I will feel better we’re down there for tonight.”

At the door of the basement, he pushed the items into her arms. “Take this and set your bed. I’ll be back quickly.”

Quickly, Aisha pulled an ancient looking mattress from under the towers of boxes. Once she dusted it and covered it with an old, yet clean, blanket from the boxes, she laid her blankets and pillow. As she set to her task, she continued to glance through the walls and watched as the Spanish man went through his drawers and drew a gun. Then he went to his wardrobe and took out a large hunting rifle. Armed and hands full with his own bed sheets and pillows, he hurried his way down to keep company with his nieta.

“Grandpa?” The teen asked worriedly the moment he came through the door.

“Everything will fine, amor. Just a precaution.” He set the rifle against the wall where he was planning to keep watch for the majority of the night. After setting his bed, he pulled out boxes of bullets from his jacket and began loading his gun.

Aisha became conflicted. This huge scare was nothing but a consequence of her own stupid actions. Yet, she was hesitant to say anything anyway, more afraid of facing her grandfather’s anger—or even worse, his disappointment. So she just laid awake listening to her grandfather’s slightly shallow breathing, unable to sleep from the shame she felt. There she was in comfort and he was awake and panicking over something that didn’t exist.

Eventually, she flipped over to her side, closed her eyes, and fell to an uneasy sleep.

—

Aisha jolted out of her sleep when she heard the loud rustling of Santiago’s clothing when he shifted into a more comfortable position. Wondering the time, she used her x-ray vision to look outside. From the birds flying in the sky and the creatures scurrying around the land scavenging for food, she could deduce that it was sometime early in the morning.

“Hey, Grandpa, what time is it?” Her muffled voice came from under her covers.

Santiago sat at a chair a few feet away with a blanket over his lap and his gun on top. He checked his watch to answer her question. “Almost 6:30.”

She had no idea how many hours of sleep she had since she didn’t think to check the time when she came back, and felt just as energized from her escapade so her body couldn’t give her any sign of recharge.

“How long are we staying here?” She asked suddenly.

“Until I think we’re safe.” He replied vaguely.

"Shouldn’t you call the police? Or even put on the TV or radio for some news?”

“Not now, Aisha. I don’t want to go up there until I have to.”

She became silent, knowing that pushing would do no good. Santiago was the kind of man where the more he was pressured, the more he clammed up. And she knew this better than anyone because he’s where she got the same kind of behavior from. It was best to leave him to his own moods and hope that he would move on, but sooner than later. Not to mention, she also owed him the her cooperation since she was the whole cause behind the mess in the first place.

They stayed there for a few hours more. Aisha occupying herself by going through the contents of some boxes as quietly as she could as her grandfather diligently watched the door with his gun in hand.

After some time, Aisha saw his resolve wear down minute by minute. Slowly, his shoulders slumped and he gave out a resigned sigh. “Okay, chiquita. Tell me if you can hear or see anything suspicious.”

“No, there’s nothing out there, Pa.”

He got up from his place, bones cracking loudly after a long time without movement. Now that he was facing her, Aisha got a good look at his face and grimaced. The bags under his eyes were more swollen that usual and the area around his pupils were bloodshot. His hands were also shaking lightly, but she also chalked that up to the lack of sleep.

“Grandpa, you should have gone to sleep. You now that I would have heard if there was anything going on.”

He turned away and ran his hands over his gun with trembling hands. “Mija, when you’ve seen what I’ve seen, you take no chances.”

Aisha just stared at him uncomprehendingly. She knew that he was paranoid and was even warned by her parents of moments of strange behavior—being told that it was a side effect of war and that she would just have to let him be.

“I’m going to go up now.” Aisha said with a hand on the doorknob, a request for permission implied in the statement.

“Go ahead.” He replied quietly without looking at her.

Aisha went to her room feeling unsure and a bit hesitant to leave him by himself. Once in her room, she turned on her radio and tuned into the local news channels. Everyone was talking about the loud boom that woke up nearly everyone at 3 in the morning. They went back and forth, speculating about what would have been the cause, but because it was so far from civilization, they thought that it might have been a meteor that crashed.

“ _I’m telling you. I jumped in my bed when I hear it. It wasn’t very loud from where I was, but you could tell that it was a booming sound and that we were only catching the end of its intensity._ ” The commentator on the radio channel the teenager was listening to stated excitedly in Spanish.

“ _I agree, I got scared myself. I almost thought that it was a bomb went off and waited to see if it happened again. I still think that it could’ve been one. I mean, it’s a bit too loud to be a meteor—not that I’m any expert in how loud a meteor crash would be, but still, I don’t think it would be that loud._ ” The second commentator replied with equal vigor.

“ _Eh, I’m not so sure about that. Meteors get pretty fast when they reach Earth’s gravitational pull. Plus, it could be something bigger than usual and that’s why it caused a louder noise._ ”

“ _Well, sure. You might be right… but at this point, I’m just going to wait and see the result of the investigation._ ”

“ _Inves—how do you there’s going to be an investigation?_ ”

“ _Come on, something this strange isn’t going to be dismissed so easily by the authorities. They’re definitely scrambling to get there—or are already there. I bet that if it’s not a meteor and turns out to be something unusual, then we might not be hearing anything about it for a while. Mark my words, there will be radio silence from the government._ ”

“ _So you think they’ll try to cover it up?_ ”

“ _If it’s not a meteor, yeah._ ”

Aisha slowly reached over and shut the radio off. Collapsing back on her bed, she placed her palms over her face. “I’m never doing that again.”


End file.
